Luhansk student wins Sopinka Award

TORONTO - The fourth John Sopinka Award for Excellence has been awarded to Roman Didenko, a fourth-year student of history at Luhansk Pedagogical Institute in Luhansk, Ukraine.

Established in 1988, the award is named for Justice John Sopinka of the Supreme Court of Canada. It was established by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Foundation of Toronto.

The Poltava-born Mr. Didenko is the first student from a Ukrainian university to receive the Sopinka Award.

The scholarship has made it possible for Mr. Didenko to take up a full-year residency at the Center for Conflict Resolution of St. Paul University in Ottawa.

During his residency Mr. Didenko will be trained to become a teacher/instructor of conflict resolution. After his return to Ukraine in 1997, he will complete his degree at Luhansk Pedagogical Institute and then begin training Ukrainian students in conflict resolution.

Jodi Leforte of the United States Peace Corps wrote one of the letters of recommendation for the award recipient, noting in part: "As his professor, I am impressed by his inquisitiveness and well-developed opinions. I instruct him in English, and I am overjoyed by his eloquent usage of that language. Not many people are capable of making their opinions and beliefs understood in a foreign language. Ukraine needs a leader like Roman, who leads not for his own self interest, but for the interests of the people."

Previous John Sopinka Scholarship recipients include Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk, formerly of Queen's University; Prof. Bohdan Kordan of the University of Saskatchewan; and Orest Babij, a graduate of Royal Military College, now at Oxford University.

Mr. Didenko's professors at Luhansk Pedagogical Institute and his American professors recommended him for the 1996 Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program for university students from Ukraine.

Program Director Ihor Bardyn, speaking about Mr. Didenko, said: "It is students and youth of Ukraine who can act as the catalyst to turn Ukraine into a democratic and civil society. Vaclav Havel, the Czech president, wrote that 'the key to former Communist countries' passage to democracy is the creation of a civil society in which the rule of law checks the human impulse to act out fantasies of hatred.' Democracy, Mr. Havel points out, is not enough."

The ability of Ukraine's students to study and retain what they have learned from Western democratic and civil societies is a key link in the transformation of former Communist countries into democratic and civil societies, Mr. Bardyn noted.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 12, 1997, No. 2, Vol. LXV

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